Overview#

Microsoft TIME is a mess. There are many different formats of Time or DateTime used within many different systems and some which are the same definition return different or truncated values. There is no consistency and no point of reference that we can find for an explanation.

Microsoft TIME LargeInteger Date#

LargeInteger Date is one of the Microsoft TIMEs and may be referred to as FILETIME

Microsoft Active Directory#

Many attributes in Microsoft Active Directory have a DateTime type (syntax) called LargeInteger which is defined the same as LargeInteger Date.

Microsoft Active Directory also uses UTCTime and GeneralizedTime both with the OID of 2.5.5.11

In addition Microsoft Active Directory also supports GeneralizedTime for SOME AttributeTypes:

• CreateTimestamp
• meetingEndTime
• meetingStartTime
• ModifyTimestamp
• WhenChanged
• WhenCreated
• all the msDS-(Attributes that are dates)
• all the msExch(Attributes that are dates)

Microsoft Windows#

Microsoft Windows Operating Systems use Windows Time service for Time synchronization

MsSQL#

But, MsSQL use the Unix Time format as I recall.

Microsoft Windows, the Client Operating System, counts the number of 100-nanosecond ticks since 12:00 A.M. January 1, 1601 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) as reckoned in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, but only returns the current time to the nearest millisecond.

How to Convert Microsoft Time#

From the command-line, on Vista and Windows 7 this worked.

w32tm /ntte time-as-an-integer

We also have used the on-line site Active Directory / LDAP Date Converter

Microsoft Excel#

Microsoft Excel stores DateTime as NumericDate that represents the days since 1989-12-30. This is also the VB dateTime.

More Information#

There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:

• FILETIME
• LargeInteger Date
• Time And Epochs

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• [#1] - File Times - based on information obtained 2014-03-08